I will just say this: I would never presume to question anything George Lucas says is canon in Star Wars. And our job was not to negate or undo. A lot of people who are critics of our Star Trek, and I respect all of them, said we destroyed what they loved and negated everything. And we worked hard to clarify that we are not saying that our Star Trek over-rides a thing of the original Star Trek — it was a parallel timeline. I never wanted to negate canon that fans held so dear. And because I love Star Wars and have for too many years… … And having said all that and meaning it — I don’t want to presume over-write or change what George says the rules are.

I’m not someone who quite understands the science of the Force. To me Star Wars was never about science fiction — it was a spiritual story. And it was more of a fairytale in that regard. For me when I heard Obi-Wan say that the Force surrounds us and binds us all together, there was no judgement about who you were. This was something that we could all access. Being strong with the force didn’t mean something scientific, it meant something spiritual. It meant someone who could believe, someone who could reach down to the depths of your feelings and follow this primal energy that was flowing through all of us. I mean, thats what was said in that first film!

And there I am sitting in the theater at almost 11 years old and that was a powerful notion. And I think this is what your point was, we would like to believe that when shit gets serious, that you could harness that Force I was told surrounds not just some of us but every living thing. And so, I really feel like the assumption that any character needs to have inherited a certain number of midi-chlorians or needs to be part of a bloodline, it’s not that I don’t believe that as part of the canon, I’m just saying that at 11 years old, that wasn’t where my heart was. And so I respect and adhere to the canon but I also say that the Force has always seemed to me to be more inclusive and stronger than that.

I had my office moved to the art department just because I knew that’s were I was going to be spending most of my time. It was up a floor and down the hall. I had two offices; I kept one in the executive wing and the other one in the art department where I spent all of my time. That’s sort of where I come from, so I wanted to just monitor it you know? Daniel Simon, who was our primary vehicle designer, has got a book called COSMIC MOTORS that showcases his work, but he is this amazing designer. He did virtually all of our vehicles and aircrafts along with the submarine and all of that stuff. He’s sort of the guy I wanted to be when I was designing stuff for STAR WARS. I worked as closely with those guys as I could just sort of monitoring the stuff, but with somebody like Daniel you just sort of send him off in a direction and let him generate stuff. It was amazing.

So, I took the screenplay and divided it into three stories, and rewrote the first one. As I was writing, I came up with some ideas for a film about robots, with no humans in it. When I got to working on the Wookiee, I thought of a film just about Wookiees, nothing else. So, for a time, I had a couple of odd movies with just those characters. Then, I had the other two films, which were essentially split into three parts each, two trilogies. When the smoke cleared, I said, 'This is really great. I'll do another trilogy that takes place after this.' I had three trilogies of nine films, and then another couple of odd films. Essentially, there were twelve films.

It's a nine-part saga that has a beginning, a middle and an end. It progresses over a period of about fifty or sixty years with about twenty years between trilogies, each trilogy taking about six or seven years

The Star Wars series started out as a movie that ended up being so big that I took each act and cut it into its own movie…The original concept really related to a father and a son, and twins—a son and a daughter. It was that relationship that was the core of the story. And it went through a lot of machinations before I even got to the first draft screenplay. And various characters changed shapes and sizes. And it isn’t really until it evolved into what is close to what Star Wars now is that I began to go back and deal with the stories that evolved to get us to that point…When I first did Star Wars I did it as a big piece. It was like a big script. It was way too big to make into a movie. So I took the first third of it, which is basically the first act, and I turned that into what was the original Star Wars…after Star Wars was successful and I said “Well gee, I can finish this entire script, and I can do the other two parts.

George Lucas, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas by Dale 2 Pollock, 1983 p. 36

You have to remember that originally Star Wars was intended to be one movie, Episode IV of a Saturday matinee serial. You never saw what came before or what came after. It was designed to be the tragedy of Darth Vader. It starts with this monster coming through the door, throwing everybody around, then falfway through the movie you realise that the villain of the piece is actually a man and the hero is his son. And so the villain turns into the hero inspired bythe son. It was meant to be one movie, but I broke it up because I didn’t have the money to do it like that—it would have been five hours long.

George Lucas, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas by Dale 2 Pollock, 1983 p. 38

The first [version] talked about a princess and an old general. The second version involved a father, his son, and his daughter; the daughter was the heroine of the film. Now the daughter has become Luke, Mark Hamill's character. There was also the story of two brothers where I transformed one of them into a sister. The older brother was imprisoned, and the young sister had to rescue him and bring him back to their dad.

George Lucas, Claire Clouzot, "The Morning of the Magician: George Lucas and Star Wars," The George Lucas Interviews, ed. Sally Kline (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), pp. 57-58, ISBN 1-57806-125-3

The part that I never really developed is the death of Luke and Leia's mother. I had a backstory for her in earlier drafts, but it basically didn't survive. When I got to Jedi, I wanted one of the kids to have some kind of memory of her because she will be a key figure in the new episodes I'm writing. But I really debated whether or not Leia should remember her.

[Irvin] Kershner was absolutely perfect for the middle film, which is a dark, troubled and anguished film. That’s the kind of character Kershner is himself; he’s very amusing socially, but his mind is full of dark torments and worries. George was the perfect man for Star Wars because he understands gags. He’s got a great story sense. He’s got tremendous appreciation of all the little gags and jokes. But I think I was probably the right guy for the third film, because I like the great virtues: I love loyalty, friendship, love...

One, two and three are going to be very interesting − if George is ever able to start writing. Steven [Spielberg] and I would like to. It’s a very interesting part of the saga, the early days. The youth of Ben Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker is really important. It’s a very different world. Technology is different, means of communication are different. Sentiments are different. But it will take a long time, I’m afraid so. It’s just a fact we will have to face. Good things come in threes, and all good things come to an end. That’s just one of the realities of life. Your kids may see it.

Star Wars leans more towards fantasy than science fiction and I think that’s to its benefit. It has good vs. evil, monsters, princesses, knights, magic items, etc. All of these make it as easy fit for the RPG genre. Star Wars is also one of the most beloved IPs in the world. Since the first movie came out in 1977 fans have wanted to live in that universe and video games are the closest they’ll ever get to that fantasy.

Before Star Wars, the films that were box-office hits were The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Bonnie And Clyde and The French Connection - gritty, amoral art movies. Then suddenly the onus switched over to spectacle and everything changed... I don't know if that is a good thing.

George made a fairy tale story, with a princess, the young prince, and the cynical Harrison Ford playing Han Solo. To me, it was an absolutely perfect rendition of a great comic serial. I learned to draw from comic strips, the better ones. I always remembered the early Supermans were better drawn than the later one, and the early Tarzans were spectacularly well drawn, the anatomy of the jungle was great. There’s artistry in comic strips and George was obviously a devotee of that and what he did was brilliant.

No, again, it's not my characters, so he can do whatever he wants. And the story was also that I was going to do it. I was going to go to Lucas and be their John Lasseter-type of person and do a feature and supervise the "Star Wars" television show. And things kind of fell apart, blah blah blah. But, yeah, I'm super proud of what we did. And I felt like we did a justice to "Star Wars" and as a fan.

That's the one thing that is kind of weird that he just wants to wipe it off. Because we used to be in the encyclopedias, some of the characters that we created. And now they're gone. And you can't get the DVD and all of this other stuff. And it's like, whatever. What are you going to do, right? It existed.

What the “non-canon” announcement by [Lucasfilm Ltd.] means is that they aren’t going to be bound by the Expanded Universe books, comics, and games as they plan their new movies. Realistically, that’s something they had to do—the EU is just too big, complicated, and occasionally contradictory for them to have to deal with.

However I’m guessing that EU stories that aren’t referenced (or contradicted) by the sequel movies will still be considered sort-of alive, in the same way that most Clone Wars-era stories (like Outbound Flight) were mostly unaffected, with the exception being all of the previous material on Boba Fett’s backstory.

Alternatively, if the new movies do contradict my books in some way, I can probably come up with some hand-waving story that will explain the apparent discrepancy. If there’s one thing we authors are good at, it’s hand-waving.

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